John Marmaduke, born March 14, 1833

The fourth child and second son among ten children, Marmaduke was born on his father's plantation near Arrow Rocke in Saline County, Missouri.  His mother was Lavinia Sappington Marmaduke.  His father, Meredith Miles Marmaduke (1791–1864), was the eighth Governor of Missouri. His great-grandfather, John Breathitt, had served as the Governor of Kentucky from 1832–1834, dying in office.

Marmaduke attended Chapel Hill Academy and the Masonic College in Missouri, before attending Yale University for two years and then Harvard University for another year, leaving to accept an place at West Point.

He was 28 years old when the Civil War began.

Congressman John Phelps appointed Marmaduke to the United States Military Academy, where he graduated in 1857, placed 30th out of 38 students. He briefly served in the First United States Mounted Rifleman, before being transferred to the Second United States Cavalry under Albert Sidney Johnston. 

Marmaduke was on duty in the New Mexico Territory in the spring of 1861 when he received news that Missouri had seceded from the Union. He traveled home and met with his father, an avid Unionist. Even though the news was false, Marmaduke finally decided to resign from the  United States Army, effective April 1861. 

Claiborne Jackson

Pro-secession Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson, Marmaduke's uncle, soon appointed him as the colonel of the First Regiment of Rifles in the Missouri State Guard,  Governor Jackson departed Jefferson City in June to recruit more troops.  Marmaduke realized his troops were in no way prepared for combat, but Governor Jackson ordered him to make a stand.  Union General Nathaniel Lyon's 1,700 well-trained and equipped soldiers easily routed Marmaduke's untrained and poorly armed force at the Battle of Boonville on June 17, a skirmish mockingly dubbed by Unionists "the Boonville Races," since Marmaduke's recruits broke and ran after just 20 minutes of battle.

Battle of Booneville

Disgusted by the situation, Marmaduke resigned his commission in the Missouri State Guard and traveled to Richmond, Virginia, where he was commissioned a first lieutenant n the regular Confederate States Army. The Confederate War Department ordered him to report for duty in Arkansas, where he soon was elected the lietenant colonel of the 1st Arkansas Battalion. He served on the staff of William Hardee, a former West Point instructor of infantry tactics. Marmaduke's former commander, Albert Sidney Johnston, asked him to join his staff in early 1862.  Marmaduke was wounded in action at the Battle of Shiloh as Colonel of the 3rd Confederate Infantry, incapacitating him for several months.

Albert Sidney Johnston

In November 1862, the War Department confirmed Marmaduke's promotion to  brigadier general. His first battle as a brigade at the Battle of Prairie Grove. In April 1863, Marmaduke departed Arkansas with 5,000 men and ten artillery pieces and entered Union-held Missouri. However, he was repulsed at the Battle of Cape Girardeau and forced to return to Arkansas.

Marmaduke

Controversy soon followed Marmaduke.  After the Battle of Reed's Bridge on August 26, 1863, Marmaduke accused General Lucius Walker of imperiling Marmaduke's men by being absent from the field in the face of the enemy. Walker, judging from the indications that the enemy was about to flank his position, had withdrawn his troops after dark. Walker felt that he had been unjustly accused of cowardice and challenged Marmaduke to a formal duel. “I have not pronounced you a coward,” Marmaduke wrote, “but I desire to inform you that your conduct as commander of the cavalry was such that I determined no longer to serve you.” 

General Sterling Price ordered both officers to remain in their quarters in an attempt to prevent the duel. However by an unfortunate series of mishaps, the orders were not delivered to Walker. At dawn on Sunday, September 6, Walker and Marmaduke squared off with Colt Navy revolvers on the north bank of the Arkansas River near Little Rock. Both fired and missed. Marmaduke then recocked and fired a second time, mortally wounding Walker in the right side, just above the beltline. Walker forgave Marmaduke when the latter offered his assistance.  

Lucius "Marsh" Walker

As General Walker lay dying, his wife rode from St. Francis to Little Rock, and gave birth to their son, Lucius M Walker, Jr. Lucius M. Walker died at 5 p.m. the next day.  

Marmaduke was briefly placed under arrest for his participation in the duel.

Marmaduke later commanded a cavalry division in the Trans-Mississippi Department, serving in the Red River Campaign. During this period, Marmaduke once again was involved in controversy. Commanding a mixed force of Confederate troops, including Native-American soldiers of the 1st and 2nd Choctaw Regiments, Marmaduke defeated a Federal foraging detachment at the Battle of Poison Springs,  Arkansas on April 18, 1864. Marmaduke's men were accused of murdering African-American soldiers of the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry (later designated the 79th U.S. Colored Infantry).  Marmaduke and other white officers claimed that the accusations of illegal killings were overblown, and blamed any murders that may have happened on the Choctaw troops who, in the words of one while Confederate, did "kill and scalp some" of the black troops. Marmaduke was hailed in the Confederate press for what was publicized as a significant southern victory.

Marmaduke commanded a division in September–October 1864 into Missouri, where Marmaduke was captured at the Battle of Mine Creek.  While still a prisoner of war at Johnson's Island in Ohio, Marmaduke was promoted to major general in March 1865. He was released after the war ended.

Johnson's Island Prison Camp

His younger brother, Henry Hungerford Marmaduke, served in the Confederate Navy, and was captured and was imprisoned on Johnson's Island.  Two other Marmaduke brothers died in the war.

After the war, Marmaduke went on a tour of Europe before returning to St. Louis. He worked briefly for an insurance company, whose ethics he found contrary to his own. He then edited an agricultural journal, and publicly accused the railroads of discriminatory pricing against local farmers. The governor soon appointed Marmaduke to the state's first Rail Commission. Marmaduke decided to enter politics, but lost the 1880 Democratic nomination for governor to former Union general Thomas Crittenden, who had strong support and financial backing from the railroads. Undeterred, Marmaduke campaigned four years later for Governor of Missouri at a time when public opinion had changed, and railroad reform and regulation became more in vogue.

Marmaduke conducted a campaign which emphasized his Confederate service, emphasized alleged abuses of Missourians by Union troops during the Civil War, celebrated the activities of pro-Confederate "partisan guerrillas" such as William Clark Quantrill, claimed that the Republican Party in Missouri a tool of "Carpetbaggers" to oppress "native" Missourians, and made overt appeals to white racism. Ironically, considering Marmaduke's "Confederate-focused" campaigning, he was elected on a platform (officially) focused on cooperation between former Unionists and Confederates, promising an agenda which would produce a "New Missouri".

He settled potentially crippling railroad strikes in 1885 and 1886. The following year, Marmaduke pushed laws through the state legislature that finally began regulating the state's railway industry. Marmaduke also dramatically boosted the state's funding of public schools, with nearly a full third of the annual budget allocated to education. 

He never married, and his two nieces served as hostesses at the Governor's Mansion.

Like his great-grandfather, Marmaduke died while in office, passing away from pneumonia on December 28, 1887, in Jefferson City on the same day that he was supposed to host his yearly Christmas party in the mansion for the town's children. 

He was buried in the City Cemetery. His tombstone reads: "He was fearless and incorruptible."